Knit – Hopefully Creative

Tiny Potato

Making the Tiny Motivational Potato reality.

I am a tiny potato
And I believe in you
You can do the thing

It was my friend’s birthday recently and I decided to make the tiny potato for the occasion. I used the
Knit Potato by Carina Lee as the basis and added a pocket to his back for some cute greetings. The saying has been used by us a lot in the past, so I though it would be fun(ny), to make a tiny potato. I started the project in the evening and finished it that night. It’s really a lot more pink like the source image than this pictures make you believe. He’s such a doofus and I love him immensely.

Graduation Winter 2018

So the inspiration for this one was based on these two pins: skirt & dress. The bottom is two half circle skirts, and the top is the always fabulous garden party dress, somewhat hacked. I used a knit fabric that was black on one side and had a diagonal plaid pattern on the other side. The bottom had a kind of odd graffiti border, but I choose not to show that, and it’s now the inside of the outer skirt. There was not a lot of fabric left after cutting two half circle skirts, so I had to make some choices to conserve fabric.

Those little reverse triangles in the shoulder meant I could position the front more economically on the fabric. For the sleeves, I did use the original sleeve width, but the sleeve caps of a t-shirt pattern were substituted. I made the sleeves as long as I could with what fabric remained. However, elbow length sleeves are the devil – cold underarms. So I decided to attempt a kind of bishop sleeve by using another piece of fabric. This worked! It’s just about long enough and has the shallowest hem I could manage.

One of the hardest parts of this dress was figuring out how to do pockets. For events like this, I need to have pockets to put my phone and the schedule etc in. Since there were no side seams, in seam pockets would be hard. Making symmetric welt pockets in a stretchy knit would also not be my idea of fun, also because I did not have a lot of fabric left. In the end I made giant patch pockets. They are not super visible, but did work very well.

I liked this dress, although it was not as successful in keeping out the cold as last year’s outfit was. Still, it performed its duty even if I did change into pants and a sweater halfway through the reception. For next year, I’ll try to find something warmer.

Accidental Harry Potter Sweater

Red and yellow seem to become Harry Potter colours really easy and really quickly. I only found this out after I’d finished most of my sweater though. Truth be told, I don’t mind. I like the sweater, it is comfortable, warm, pretty and it has stripes. Those stripes were a complete pain in the ass to finish, but that’s the life of a (somewhat new) knitter, I guess.

The original pattern is $5 in Paris which is free on Ravelry, you can see my very limited notes here. I now also remember why I thought I’d blogged about it, I did post the pictures on Ravelry. Sometimes you’d think I’d forget my head if it wasn’t stuck on. I did already show quite a few pictures of me wearing it, just see the M M M ’15 posts.

For the sweater, I basically fudged a bit and math-ed with the stitch counts to suit my gauge and called it a day. Also, the stripes were sort of supposed to continue along the arms too, but I’d ran out of white yarn, and so made them completely red. I actually like it like this, so happy accident!

You’ve now seen the front and back, and they were so pretty, weren’t they?! But the nicest bit is the neck. In it is this cute little tag I bought from a shoppy. I finished the neck with elastic, as it became a bit stretched out during the day and sank further and further off the shoulder. I hate off the shoulder everything, so that was not an option. This solution works, and it’s a nice pop of bright red on the insides.

I will write about the graduation dress when I have some nice(r) pictures. And once the day is over so I can tell all about the possible thunderstorm coming our way.

Winter is Coming!

While you may think from the previous post that my head is still in summer land, it is actually cold over here. I don’t particularly like the cold, so the last time (I think?) I was at the fabric market, I bought a meter of something red, thick and stretchy. I figured I might be able to make a sweater out of it. Well, my size turned out to be a blessing, since I could actually get a long-sleeved sweater out of that 1 meter. If I’d been only a little bit hippier, it would not have fit!

I chose to use my t-shirt pattern and just elongate the arms. Why do it the hard way, right? Then I copied the hood of a sweater I’ve bought and futzed a bit to get the hood to fit in the neck hole. In the end, it all worked out. I had the body of the sweater lying in my room since Monday, but I was a bit scared to attach the (finished) hood. I bit the bullet today and attached it. It worked the first try! Then I wanted to make thumb holed cuffs. So I found myself a tutorial (this one, thanks!). I only had to redo the first one three times. 1st time: I did the second seam the wrong way round because I was too stubborn to read the instructions carefully. 2nd time, it went right but the opening was a bit big, so I ripped it all out and for take 3, I angled the seam and that worked fine! The second one worked in one go! Yay, for learning. Lastly, I attached a bottom band. Red T-shirt Sweater Hoody thing is a reality!

Front and back, naturally.

Thumb hole and insides. I only sewed a few bits with my sewing machine (inside of the cuffs and bottom band, ‘topstitching around the hood’ and the pointy bit where the hood attaches), the rest was done with the serger. I only have white or black thread, there was white still in it and I was too lazy to switch, nor did I care about the colour.

Hopefully I’m now ready for the real winter times! It should be quite warm!

Experiment

I have been planning on making a coat for a while now. Since, you know, it’s winter in my part of the world. I found this pattern in a magazine that was available in the Netherlands and it’s this one. Now, I wanted to test it out before I cut into the wool I have. I still had 2 metres of this strange yellow knit fabric, and I needed a warm top of some sort. So I put 1 and 1 together and ended up with this:

Front Back

It closes with hidden snaps (the buttons are not functional). The pattern in the magazine started at size 36-38, which I figured would be slightly too big, so I retraced all the lines approximately one size (so 32-34) smaller. When I cut it and sewed it up, I still had to take it in at least a cm on all seams, but now it fits quite nicely. There are inseam pockets in the side seams.

I’m quite happy to have it finished because now I am allowed to start something else (or I should really finish one of the other projects I have lying around). All in all though, I think this pattern will make a suitable coat, although I might make the one with the standing collar, as that seems warmer and more closed up than this version. Still, I’m happy with it. On to the coat, or so it seems!

Oh, and I wish you all a very happy and joyous 2013, may it be a crafty time!

Tag: Knit